It was a brief cameo as a fragile character menaced by John Goodman's character but - given Gilmore's distinctive appearance of thin features, long grey hair - a memorable one. There is, of course, considerably more to him than that.
Gilmore is a quiet legend in American songwriting. Born in Amarillo in 1945, he grew up in Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock when rock 'n' roll was kicking off; attended Texas Tech there, where he studied philosophy and teamed up with Ely and Butch Hancock to form the Flatlanders.
They recorded one influential alt-country album in 1972 but after it sank without a trace - it was reissued in 1990 under the appropriate title More a Legend Than a Band - Gilmore pursued his spiritual path, lived on an ashram, read philosophy and lore, studied acupuncture ...
When he returned to music in the 80s, his extraordinarily pure tenor voice became instantly recognisable and his lyrics had a deeper dimension than the surfaces betrayed.
And this quietly spoken, humorous man - who toured New Zealand with Hancock in the late 80s - says his first song was paid for by Buddy Holly's dad (L.O. Holley).
"I was just a folk singer in some little biddy coffee-house places, bootleg joints because Lubbock was dry at that time. That's how Joe and I met, in these little dives, and we became fans of each other.
"Mr Holley liked my music a lot and put in a few hundred dollars to make a recording, so I put a band together. Joe actually played bass. That band became the launching pad for all the things we did later, the Ely band evolved out of that.
"It was wonderful show of faith [by Mr Holley] although the music didn't catch the attention of anyone. He took me to meet Norman Petty [Buddy Holly's producer] who was at that time not really taking on new things. He was complimentary of the music but was sort of getting out of the business.
"I have to be forever grateful he did that because that launched a new direction. I stopped playing solo folk music and got into doing band stuff, which is what I wanted to do anyway."
Gilmore is a sporadic recording artist - "I always joke Butch Hancock ruined my writing career because I spent all of my career learning his songs, he was writing all the time and they were so good" - but in the past decade has recorded two albums of the songs and styles which influenced him. They were just a labour of love and I never expected them to be commercial."
And Gilmore admits to being a slow writer - "My wife thinks I am too much of a perfectionist" - but there is depth and spirituality in Gilmore's lyrics. In the late 90s he said: "I believe the impulse to make music is a religious impulse".
He still believes that. "I sure do, with a very, very broad interpretation of what 'religious' means. Take the word 'spirit'. If someone has a lot of spirit, or a lot of soul, we use those terms to mean higher energy.
"To learn how to play an instrument you have to be driven by your circumstances, your parents or your own energy. When you hear people play you have to think, what was it that made them want to do that when they were young ... I have giant respect for that."
Who: Texas singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Where: The Tuning Fork, Auckland.
When: Tonight
